Category: Living

I have always enjoyed where I live. It is a dusty single lane road that seems to stretch for miles in both directions. The neighbors are quite a ways away and the house is tucked away in the middle of soaring pines and spreading hickory trees. More often than not, the only company we get are the animals in the forest. When a plane passes miles overhead, I always turn to look, because the sound is foreign; I am used to birds and crickets.

In spring the geese flock into the swamp and set up gosling factories. The turkeys are out picking at the newly turned fields looking for bugs or corn from the previous year. The deer are teaching their new fawns the safe paths through the woods.

There is no doubt that to truly succeed in life you need to learn how to properly manage your time.

One thing is certain: the most effective and successful people are experts in time management and they have the same number of hours in the day as you do. So time management has nothing to do with magically expanding time to suit your needs, but of using it effectively. It is a question of self-management rather than time-management.

I look around my computer, my desk, around my house, around my life and see signs of disorder and it bothers me. Not only is it hard to find things, but I have piles of things that need to be attended to and stacks of stuff to sort and perhaps throw away and loads of files and programs I just haven’t gotten around to deleting yet. It always leaves me feeling like I am scrambling. I can never find stamps to mail out my letters and bills. My favorite running shirt is somewhere. I often forget the many correspondences or little tasks I meant to do because I don’t have them written down and if I do, that slip of paper has gone missing. All of this robs me of my peace.

I was doing some research recently and found some disturbing statistics. The average child watches 1,680 minutes of TV in a week. That same child spends 3.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their parents. That child will spend 900 hours in school a year. And that child will watch 1500 hours of television in a year.

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” ~ M K Gandhi

Money has been the world’s primary measure of success over the last 200 years. Nations want bigger GDPs. Corporations want higher market capitalization. And we individuals all want fatter bank accounts. The assumption is that if we have the money, everything else can be acquired. Money can buy us better health, more leisure time – and even increased happiness.

If you look back over the course of history, what started as a trickle of inventions has turned into a waterfall. Imagine it: first came fire, then five thousand years later the wheel, then a thousand years later the plow, then five hundred years later the printing press, then a hundred years later the telescope. Now, every day brings new inventions and advancements in previous inventions.

The internet is one of the more recent developments when you look at the timeline and it has been fascinating to watch it morph from a data transfer technology into a realm of unspeakable possibilities.

Some years ago I played baseball in Japan. If you looked at our team, you wouldn’t think much of us. Our team was a collection of older office workers and a couple husbands who had put on a few pounds around the waist over the years and one tall gangly American. We looked like an easy win, but for three years our team was one of the best in the league and always had a chance to advance to the national tournament.

We want to wish everyone the best of holidays. May this year top all the years that have passed in joy and abundance!

Personally, this year’s holidays will be the best in a long time. I am headed out on another adventure for Christmas this year. Los Angeles and meeting some new family! I can’t think of another place I want to be either. It won’t be my traditional family Christmas, but I imagine there are going to be some great moments with that same kind of newness that a visit to a new country brings. And then New Year’s is going to be a family celebration back home with great food and fellowship. Lobster and crab legs and at least a dozen different appetizers. I can’t wait.

Some years ago, when I thought about traveling overseas to live for the first time, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was enjoying my life in America, but there was definitely a desire in me for more. I wanted more than I had, more love and more money and more adventure. And I knew it had to be out there, just waiting for me to find it.

I recognize the same desire for something more in the children I work with. They are completely content with the toys they are playing with, until they see a toy someone else is playing with. I love watching their eyes grow big and then invariably they reach out to grab that toy.

Last week, I talked about expectation and how developing it can create positive action toward a desired goal. Well, this week I was watching a bit of TV and my program was interrupted by a commercial for Red Lobster, an East Coast seafood chain that serves some great food. It also happens to be one of my favorite restaurants. The commercial proceeded to display larger than life dishes of succulent crab legs being dipped in butter, juicy shrimp basted on the grill with garlic and parsley, tender lobster tails split open, and salmon dripping juice as it roasted on a cedar plank. It was only an hour or so after dinner, but that commercial made me hungry. I sat there on the couch and my mouth was watering! I could almost taste the crab and lobster I wanted it so bad.